Chapter 1: Where the Mantis Flies
A while past the woods at the edge of town is a demon made of marble and stone. She has no tongue; she has no face. That was because the demon of the little town of Wilkins was a museum, and in the Summer of 1987, she was calling to me.
During my stay as a teacher at River Valley Elementary, a time that the place beyond the woods was yet to be named, I was oblivious to the shadow she cast over our small town. And back then, the museum was only spoken of quietly, if at all, cast only into the wind by wet lips carrying playground rumors, never to be heard of again until months later when the mantises would take flight around town, or when somebody went missing.
I didn’t believe in the living, breathing flavor of demons, at least I didn’t back then. I believed in the demons inside of my father’s whiskey bottle, the demons that poured out and burned at his throat, those that swelled into his fist and bloomed. Those that merely showed a glimpse of their painful, plum-colored skin upon my mother’s eyes and cheeks before cowering away into the glass genie lamp from whence they came. I remembered those demons, and once my father had passed away, once I caved to their whispering pestilence and drank from the lamp just as he once did, they too soon remembered me.
My father wasn’t all bad, though, God-don’t-bless-his-soul. He was always an angel to my sister and I, his two star girls, if he could never treat mother the same. You could never be a princess, he would say, despite my protesting six-year-old pout. You will be a queen.
And when he spoke, his smile and giggle made me forget about what he did to mother, and the genies in his desk drawer and upon his shelf.
I guess we share those two burdens: A full-hearted compassion for the whiskey bottle, and for children.
Though, I could never have my own, of course, the world was too broken for that, too untrustworthy.
My students and nephews were my children.
I was at my sister’s place visiting them when I told her I was being transferred to Wilkins to teach. And well, it didn’t take things long to fire up.
“It’s not just that, Mariette, it’s everything, the men, the constant moving around, you’re a rolling stone. You’re right - you should ground yourself, have some of your own.” She said.
We argued for a while, as we so often did, but this time was different. She told me that I was getting older, that the big three-zero was in my rear-view mirror. I told her that she had a pompous stick-up-her-ass. You know, the usual sibling bitter bicker. But her words left me sour once she said:
“Fine! Keep moving around like a goddamn gypsy, I don’t care. Just don’t come crying to me once you’re all woozy one day and smack a kid. Like father, like daughter.” She mocked.
“You and I both know he never hit us.” I said.
“Well guess what, he still,” She paused to mouth her words as she spoke. “...cked us up.” Her eyes narrowed upon her pointy nose then to her cup. “Some more than others.”
My sister never swore.
I did.
“Say it then, Jan.” I exclaimed. “Say he fucked us up.”
But, of course, she never said it.
Some doors remain closed. And when I stormed out, the slam never truly stopped ringing in my ears. The door would remain closed for a while, for years, and my sister and I would speak no longer.
But the sound of my sister’s front door closing behind me would carry on: It was the air blustering through my windows, the hum of my engine, the call of crows as they made way for my bumper. And when I finally came driving through Wilkins inhaling my so desired breath of fresh air, all alone, I knew things would be different, that I would sober up, that the ringing reminder of my newly severed relationship with my sister would spark a change in me.
Things were different here - the pines were unfamiliar: towering, green and lush; the glistening roadside waters a crystal blue. Roads curved and bumped as I drove - a beauty that felt absent upon the flat urban grayscale ruins of my hometown.
But if I told you the most unusual thing about Wilkins were the mantids, you wouldn’t have believed me then. Nobody quite did - not even myself, until it was far too late.
It started off innocently enough, as it always did. As I made Wilkins my new home, the lime-colored bug which had shakily climbed my dashboard in the corner of my eye soon became the pest on my shower window. The mantises were everywhere by then: one late afternoon a couple danced upon my whiteboard, my pant leg. Soon enough days wouldn’t go by before I saw one, but as I dipped my feet further in the belly of the place I called my new home, the insects that pestered me would soon be unremembered - I had kids to teach, meetings and plays to attend. After all, they were just insects. Or so I should have hoped.
Distractions in this town soon came to me as easily as puddles in rain; the distractions blossomed into routine; the routine to lifestyle.
Of course, Laurence was the first. And a handsome, chiseled one, at that. For our first date night that Summer of ‘84 we spent the night curled under a movie projector that told stories of a cyborg hitman sent back in time, or something like that. I didn’t really know - it was silly, I spent most of the time then against his chest, inebriated by warm cologne. That, or love.
And when I tippy toed up to kiss him that humid night in Wilkins, I felt roots taking place through my feet, grounding me. The pines left fresh menthol upon my nose as I inhaled upon his stubble; our lips meeting under the NOW SHOWING sign of the cinema front.
At that moment I felt truly at home. Nothing could record-scratch that feeling then, not even spotting the mantis that crawled up Laurence’s neck in the evening moonlight.
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When August came around, I had been living in Wilkins for two months. Laurence and I still slinked through the hallways of River Valley Elementary between chaste romantic physicality, but the only strands of evidence we left were smirks upon each other's faces as we crossed paths outside the staff room.
I think our fling was lost on all the adults, save for Serena. She was a pretty substitute teacher from Italy on a sponsored trip and boy did she have time to pay attention when she was only marking half the number of reports as the usual staff. She paid too much attention. Other than her, I think it was only the kids that knew. But as if cowering from a monster, the children would avert their eyes from us, as did we. We didn’t want to be seen; they didn’t want to be caught looking. The only time I didn’t catch them giggling under hand-covered whispers was when we were outside, their minds busy on the slide or monkey bars.
Some of the other teachers dreaded the windy playground duty away from their quiet lunchroom haven, but I absolutely adored it. Maybe it was because the yelling kids were yet to wear on me, but I think I just hated the smell of stale coffee breath. I could deal with my hair that blew over my face as a brunette cobweb, as long as it meant some fresh air.
Happy sounds were out there. Not the dismal hum of the microwave spinning inside, nor the drone of the fax machine scanning page after page. Outside there were children playing, birds singing, wind whirling in my ears and lastly: the sound of cling wrap peeling away from my lunch that had me drooling like a Pavlovian dog.
I was sitting on a bench watching the playground when I first heard about what was through Wilkins woods.
A student of mine, Jimmy, approached me in a rush flinging bits of dust from the bark beneath his feet. “Whatta’ ya eating?” He pointed to my sandwich.
Jim was one of those well-mannered, googly-eyed kids. He looked like the boy from that movie about a mouse called Stuart, though I didn’t know it at the time because the film wouldn’t be out for decades to come.
He was staring at me with big blue eyes that looked even bigger through his glossy, high magnification spectacles. I had never seen someone take that much interest in my lunch before. Kids were lovely.
“Donny didn’t come to class today, Miss Brown.” He said with his heavy head staring at the ground.
“Oh that’s the worst.” I patted the bench for him to join me.
“You know… We’re friends, Jimmy. You can call me Mariette, because we’re friends.” I flicked him a reassuring smile before a stern look. “Just don’t call me that in class. The other kids might get jealous that you're friends with me and they’re not.”
He pouted. “Okay Miss Brow- I mean, I mean, Mary-it.”
“Where is Donny, anyhow?” I asked.
He looked up at me with the biggest pair of blue lamps. “He said his mom wouldn’t take him to go see Goffic, so we were meant to go after football. But today he’s sick, so...”
“Goffic?”
“Donny says it's a great big castle through the woods. We were going to build a treehouse base, but he says this place is even bigger and even more secret.”
“Do you mean… Gothic?” I asked, making an effort not to smile.
“No, silly, that’s my sister!” He protested.
We laughed together, but only one of us knew why.
“Well then, who’s picking you up today?”
He pouted. “I can’t go now. Donny’s mom won’t pick me up from football without Donny.”
I ushered him off the bench and he planted his feet upon the bark.
“Okay, I’ll grab you from practice, say, eight?”
His smile could have lit up a candle. “Okay, eight! Wait-” He turned around. “Are you sure you’re not going to be busy with your... boyfriend?”
I screwed up my red face before I shooed him. “Go play, go play!” My voice followed him as he jogged off into the playground warzone. “And don’t forget!”
It didn’t take long before he was reinvigorated, hugging the flying fox for dear life as he swung across the bark. “Look, I can fly!”
Jimmy’s smart comments left a warm smile on my face well after lunchtime. Stupid, sweet kids.
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The sun set quickly that evening, as it so often did on the busy days.
But when I returned to the staff room later that night to meet with Laurence, he wasn’t himself.
His back was turned; his hands fixed upon a red pen that was scribbling away at a student’s report.
And when I approached, it was clear I had caught him by surprise; his busy fingers were not swift enough to reach up and tug his turtleneck before it was already too late.
“Mariette, I-” His words began to crawl out, then not at all.
The grape bites upon his neck had bloomed enough to speak for him. Without a whisper I knew Serena, the sun-kissed substitute slut, had pecked his skin silly.
His hand met his circle-rimmed glasses in disgrace before sliding down and brushing his stubble with the hiss of rough sandpaper. “It’s not what it looks like.” He was shaking his head.
“It never is.” I was choking up. I went to slap him too but stopped.
I stormed out when I caught sight of my fingers that were lipped with wet blobs of mascara. Like the tears that had just feathered away behind my eyes and nose, I felt a stronger tickle now, one deep in my throat and chest, a yearning for the burn of sweet vodka, or maybe bourbon.
He called after me, I think, the prick. I had already passed the corridors and lockers by then and was bathing under the low starlight in the night sky. I turned to look at him, but my breath was a trailing hazy steam, and I couldn’t hear his voice over the clacking of my heels.
Yes, the bottle would make it go away.
They would go away, the lovebites on Laurence’s neck would go away. Maybe not the color, nor the shape, but I knew after a few drinks, the bruising would go - the bruises she left on his neck that only stung at mine.
I threw myself into my car and shoved it into reverse as his fists knocked against my window.
“Mariette!”
He yelled after me, but before long I had disappeared into the night.
The highway, my vision: a lengthy tunnel where time felt absent, Mariette - the new woman I had become so reacquainted with the last couple of months was absent. I was somebody else then, somebody I thought I had left behind.
The faces of Laurence and Serena were as vivid in my mind as the lampposts of the freeway that strobed in my periphery as I sped on endlessly. As far as I was concerned, only one solution could douse their stinging eyes from my head, and it was seductively bottled right at the end of the tunnel.
Most bars wouldn’t take me in. It must have been the look on my face, an expression that bartenders have grown accustomed to, one that was plastered with the desire to lose all sense of self. I don’t blame them for not wanting to deal with that on a Tuesday evening.
And for so long I drove through my relapsing tunnel of pity, stopping only to gawk at any glowing neon OPEN signs that would pour for me. Any drink would have done.
Where I ended up that night was far from being in a full pub. Alone in my car parked atop Makeout Hill I watched the Wilkins nightscape from up above, my feet brushing against beer cans, my chest cradling an open bourbon bottle to catch loose tears.
Maybe I should have stopped at a payphone to call him. No, I wasn’t one of those women. One time was too many times, Laurence. He had his chance with me. He lost me.
I brushed away my messy hair before wrapping my hands upon the rubber of my steering wheel.
And that was when my stomach sank to my feet.
“Oh God..”
My bourbon bottle slipped out of my grip and caught on my lap.
“I forgot about Jimmy.”
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I came skidding around to the football field at half-past ten; my headlights painting the bumpy neglected concrete of the lot.
The rip of my handbrake, the cans falling out of my car that toppled onto the ground with an empty clang: ringing reminders of my sister’s voice, telling me that I hadn’t changed, that I could never change.
And tumbling myself out of the sedan then, staring up at the flickering floodlights of the football field in a dizzy haze, I think I might have believed her.
“Jimmy!” I called. “I’m sorry!”
My head thumped with each shaking reverb of my yell. Not a headache, no, way too early for that of course. But a crack opening in the dizziness, a trickle, an omen of a sharp pounding that would flood through come morning.
But as I scanned the blurry field, I couldn’t see anything but well-kept grass under the cold flashing lights towering above. No quiet nor distant voice, only the crickets’ lullaby and the clacking of my drunken unpredictable heels.
It didn’t take too much searching until I saw it, however. In my periphery I had caught sight of Jimmy’s red school bag which was hanging from a low branch a few metres away from where my car had parked up, and my stomach twisted.
Walking was hard enough on two sticks, let alone drunk. And so, I tore my pesky stilettos from my feet and chucked them through my car window.
Reaching into my dash I grabbed a heavy torch, and before long I was off trotting through the thick brush.
Traversing the forest was difficult. Roots bruised my feet, thorns and branches cut away at my arms and legs.
Any burning terror was dampened by the drink: The only spotlight I had for vision wasn’t as scary as it would have been sober. When I came jogging down banks, as long as the bourbon coughed up a whistle or a singsong from my lips as I went, nothing could stop me. But it wasn’t my safety I was concerned about, it was Jimmy’s.
My voice was weak from calling out; my feet were sore from the couple miles I had walked. Luckily, the mouth of the forest finally gave way for a small clearing and a lake; my awkward steps less so after being blessed by the soft grass ahead of me. I had soon forgotten about the irritating roots and bark that had prodded through my socks moments prior.
If I looked carefully enough - if I squinted past the two moons which sat in the sky and danced upon the lake - I could make out her body.
She was vast and ornate like a gothic castle, or a mansion from a fever dream. A hundred paces away the thing beyond the woods sat quaintly, many tiny windows adorning a hollow dark-brick face. Beneath: a pair of doors that beckoned me forth. I think it might have been Jimmy that had beckoned me forth.
Around the body of water I went, and I was off again.
With every step closer the grass seemed to part with a louder whistle in the quiet night; the soft stars upon the windows reflecting different angles as I narrowed in.
When I hopped up the stairs it looked like it could swallow me whole, I was standing upon the lips of the beast. My flashlight made a blunt click as it cupped the window beside the door.
“Jimmy?” I yelled with a sharp pounding that left a wince on my face.
No response.
I couldn’t see much at all inside. Dark outlines of oblongs, bits of furniture and hanging racks all wrapped in white sheets. This place either wasn’t lived in or the owners wanted their furniture well kept.
Peering in, a whiff of drink-breath stuck to the glass in a fog.
I hated myself at that moment. And when I was drunk, perhaps even more so than I did Serena. That’s why I drowned myself in it that night, I suppose. I got what I wanted.
“Are you in there, Jim?”
I was going to make everything right, I had to.
My hand braced one of the front doors which left my fingers littered with dust.
It took quite some force to pry the tall doors open once I realized that the building was unlocked, and before long I was standing in awe as the doors groaned to a halt.
The grand foyer was pitch dark and adorned with glass cabinets that twinkled like stars upon a moonless midnight sky. Some cabinets were blanketed, others not, but all were littered with dust.
The cold marble drew heat from my feet easily as I stepped through the building's entrance; my voice echoing throughout the halls as I called out for Jimmy once more.
It took a while before I noticed that I was in a museum. Many boxes were still in the process of being relocated to their allocated wings.
As I passed one of the golden pillars that was wedged between the towering ceiling and the ivory floor, I heard ticking begin to pop beside me. Approaching the center stairwell, one of the display cabinets came alive: flickering fluorescent lights tapping away through a cloth veil in the darkness like a dying lighthouse beacon.
It made me leap and I took off, skidding. I tried the door once more, but it had locked itself tight.
Somewhere yonder the marble halls a silhouette stirred before calling out after me.
Security had heard my footsteps.
Around the corner I bolted, looking for any exit I could find.
I ushered through the northern wing of the museum through the door under the stairs leaving the marble floor wet in my wake. I took another left into what must have been the Earth & Nature Exhibition.
I ran past a few cabinets that were housing things that were a tad strange. At one point I glanced to my right to see iridescent child-sized beetles that danced moonlight off from their bulbous exoskeletons like aqua fairy dust. Through another glass pane further down the hall, my eye caught sight of ballooned frogs that floated effortlessly from their artificially scaled and rocky wall, right up to the strung neon glow worms hanging above. One nabbed a worm midair by the tongue and swallowed, lighting its round belly blue through a thin, membranous green abdomen on its slow descent.
For a while my fingers ran along and bumped across the textured hallway walls as I kept running, only to turn my head to read the golden placard to my left when my digits screeched against smooth, cold metal.
I looked down to read the etching inside the frame that read: SEEDS, GROWING LIFE.
They won’t find me here, I thought. I’ll wait it out.
The see-through door to the display was ajar; nothing horrifying stood out to me, but what took me aback was the sheer beauty of the room.
No museum that I knew could truly capture and emulate the wonder of that enclosure. It was gorgeous; it was walking into the mouth of a cavern.
Great stalactites and stalagmites adorned the rocky exhibit; a great gushing waterfall cascaded from one tall wall. The wall itself was coated with a luminescent mold that glowed like the worms I had just spotted, but not enough to blanket the room in a lime hue. Instead, rays of starlight trickled in through a purposely angled window near the great ceiling, bathing the wet rocks down below in a holy spotlight which was partly obscured by the hissing mist of the crashing water. The ecosystem was extensive, many green bugs sat undisturbed upon the graphite boundaries of the exhibit.
I leaped over the thin line of water that ran from the fall and onto the moist stones below, swatting gnats from my face as I went.
It was hard to hear myself think over the crashing, washing and hissing. But when I did think, I thought about how I would wait it out in this room, find Jimmy, and how we would make our way out of here.
My heart missed a few beats when I looked up. The man that had been following me down the hall was a mere silhouette in the doorframe to the exhibition. I stepped away as much as I could muster, but the wet rocks beneath were slippery, my feet were slipping from below me. The platform I was on could only stretch so far before the water was at my heels.
He was shouting at me: a loud boom underneath the violent pitter-patter of the waterfall’s bounce. The closer he walked, the less he looked like a security guard. He was outfitted with a fine maroon coat and dress pants, shined shoes and thin frame. I definitely did not know why he was pointing at my feet, either.
At first my stomach turned when he jumped down to the stone platform I was sliding on. I thought he was going to kill me; his hands were wide and frustrated as he spoke. When he was several feet away however, I began to make out some of the words he was saying. It loosened my tight chest somewhat, but it still didn’t make sense to me: Something about plants, tour guide, be here, exsanguination.
All that managed to trickle from my lips was “I’m sorry,” and “I’m looking for,”
He was in my face then, still pointing at my feet, and it definitely didn’t matter what I had to say.
“Listen,” His gaunt face looked ghastly in the moonlight. “I won’t hurt you, I’m just the museum tour guide. But please for the love of-”
He grabbed me by my shirt collar and thrusted me onto the ground with a thud.
“Get away from the plants!”
I could see it clearly then. The night sky that beamed through the clear ceiling was illuminating something after all. Great, bulbous weeds protruded through cracks of the stones below the guide and I. They climbed like wild beanstalks up around his suit pant leg, twirling around his calf.
“Oh God,” He muttered.
I didn’t yet understand what he was so afraid of, but his horrified gaunt face alone told me he didn’t have much time.
Spores filled the air, popping puffs that coughed out of the weeds as hazy green dust all at once. The man was pinching his nose; he was covering his mouth. But before long I knew it was too late, just as his expression had alerted me to, I knew the dust had already coated his tongue and throat; the spewed powder burned through his suit pant leg and lathered his skin in foul vomit-colored specs.
I felt sick. If I knew he was going to grow, I would have done something, anything. But in the end, as I watched him break and expand, I knew there was nothing I could have ever done.
My mind recalled the etched placard I had braced outside the room. SEEDS, GROWING LIFE.
The meaty leaves of the guide’s leg blossomed like a flesh-sunflower to make way for the increasingly bulging bone of his new elephant stump. Chunks of his musculature hit the wet rocks with a dull thop as he heaved around.
He cried out unavailingly. Tears ran freely down his cheek and down onto the snow-white bone below.
An acidic taste lurched at the back of my throat as I wriggled away. The man was, he was... growing.
His ribcage was next, the spores had settled in his lungs. And when those two spiny white wings finally broke free from his chest, covering me in specs of cherry-coloured paint, I wanted to shriek. But nothing ever came from my mouth, only that of a heaving gasp escaping me like I was just plunged into an icy pool.
“I’m,” I gave it my all to stop hyperventilating. I crawled towards him as he collapsed, holding his hand in the dim light that trickled in from the stars above. “I’m so sorry, I,”
There was something that made my skin crawl the most that evening: It was that after all that screaming and suffering, the way he spoke to me then was quiet and deliberate. He was no longer in the museum beside me then, he was fading away to somewhere without worry, some place new. In a final moment of peace, his eyes met mine before he uttered:
“Look after Ernie for me, will you?”
And when his eyes lost light and his head rolled, the winged bugs that were once still on the wall pried away slowly before blossoming into a buzzing green cloud.
I came bolting out of the cavern, bouncing off the wall outside in a paralyzing panic.
“Jimmy!” I shouted, my voice echoing through the long hallway of the Earth & Nature wing.
Time moved strangely within the museum’s walls. Had I been running around for five minutes, or had it been an hour? It was possible that I was simply witnessing my brain proactively erasing the memories of the things that had just happened to me. My mind was trying to save me pain from future trauma recollection, and in doing so stretched the delicately imagined threads of perceived memory-time so thin they would soon distort before fading into nothingness.
I cursed myself that I couldn’t let the faces of Lawrence and Serena fade from my mind the same way.
“If you’re in here, come out, it’s Miss Brown.” I made my way further down the hall. “I really, really want to leave, I’m scared Jimmy.”
Bars in the tall windows of the grand building cast their shadows against marble walls. They may have been innocuous at first, but with what I had witnessed that evening, any shift in the storm-grey starlight that painted the museum was enough to make my hands quake.
At the intersection between what must have been the insect exhibition hall and the museum’s greenhouse, a whining squeak beckoned me from behind.
The voice through the final door of the hallway was rasp; it was a cry. A baby in distress.
On and on the baby cried as my hand met the metal doorknob and resisted entering the room. First a whimper, then a heart wrenching scream. Staring vacantly at the placard which read BREATHING STORM, the more my mind would drift to the horrors that could wait beyond, and the less I desired to help. But in fact, the whimper was deeper, it might have been a boy’s sob, which meant it might have been Jimmy.
Still shaking, I reluctantly twisted the handle, and through the next tent of the horrifying, marble circus I ushered.
The room was near pitch, save for flashes of light that lit up the room as distant, dancing sparks. First the absence of light, then a flash, then an all-encompassing nothingness. Air inside the room was blustering and lifting my coat in a violent hurricane; cold rain pelted my skin before trickling down my nose and chin.
“Are you in here?” I screamed with a chattering jaw over the rushing wind.
From what I could see in the time during the brief illuminations, there was no Jimmy. The loud storm took my hearing, the darkness took my sight. It was one loud disorientating and wet headache and being drunk was certainly no aid. My hand slid against one of the smooth, drenched walls of the exhibition as I tried to propel my way through the forceful bluster across the room to the other exit door a few meters away.
I was halfway to the door when I felt the odd pressure from the rain against my arms. I realized the sparks I had seen were strands of lightning; I was inside of a miniature storm. And with each step closer to the door, I felt the water coming from the ceiling beginning to take shape, beginning to wrap around my wrist.
Around me: The storm began to weep - it was a cacophony of whines from an angry infant.
The rain was alive; it was breathing on me, bullying me.
I tried to block my ears, but with one hearty tug the materialized muscle of the falling water pulled me by my arm and tossed me against one drenched marble wall.
It giggled.
I attempted to break free from the windy grasp but the harder I thrusted myself forwards the further it pushed back.
The lightning that shot sporadic forks around the room briefly lit up the flooding space. From then I could see the mass of rain taking shape, forming impossible flowing appendages upon a teardrop abdomen.
You’re hyperventilating again. Breathe. Just breathe.
Above my head from the ceiling clicked a noise from a small rusty speaker, and the intercom replayed a muffled voice.
‘The basis of human hopes and dreams,’ I knew that distorted voice.
‘Emotion and memory - nothing but electricity in a pink ball of wrinkled flesh inside your skull.’
Flash.
The storm’s ghoulish jaw hung wide in the center like the eye of a hurricane, the rest of its body and appendages wavering wildly like windy willows. It chortled childishly before everything went dark again.
‘What are we, if we are not a storm?’ The voice of the dearly departed guide rang out over the harsh wind.
The grip of flowing water around my wrist was tightening, tightening.
‘At our private establishment, you will see consciousness uncaged from skin and bone.’ The speaker’s connection wavered. ‘Do not leave yourself unsupervised in this exhibit at any time during the tour. She has developed the neurons of a two year old so far, a real case of the terrible twos. But from afar, feel free to take in her wonder. Dear patron, I welcome you: The breathing storm.’
Without warning I swiped my arm across its torso. The suspended water screamed as I darted through the door; its wrist that had been so tightly locked around mine became a mere puddle on the ground as it lost shape outside the exhibit.
I slid my wet back against the Natural wing hallway and fell to the floor. For a while I pulled at my hair and watched the cold night sky and the great graphite clouds that she rolled outside the window. Hope was slowly trickling through my fingers like sand. For a short while I simply sat and watched the starlit sky and it carried me away from the museum. It must have been something in the moonlight, something the tour guide had seen when his eyes faded to void. And in that moment, I felt it too - the brief bliss. But as the smokey clouds obscured the moon, I was reminded where I was, and to press on.
My mind freely walked the museum alongside me as I traversed her enormous body. Drenched, bruised and bloody - the building had chewed me and spat me out. When I called for the boy, my voice was weaker, exhausted from screaming, bruised from the museum’s teeth.
“Jimmy,” I said. “If you’re here, please just come home.”
My tired feet slogged beneath me as I checked around every corner, leaving wet prints on the marble in my wake.
I had reached the grand, decorated foyer and climbed the tall ivory colored staircase to one floor up. I made my way past the Music and Arts Exhibition, past the flowing walls of sand that depicted paintings of The Scream. At one spot the stone floor seemed to carve away a fenced-off hole in the marble which served as a viewing area to the Oceans exhibition down below. The flowing tanks held great waves that rose and crashed within their glass barriers as the creatures inside stirred. It was absolutely terrifying to find that the museum’s staff had left the tops of the aquariums exposed.
Rain was beginning to gently spit against the great panes of the museum. I was almost sure that Jimmy might’ve still been lingering around the forest, and I worried about him catching a chill. But right before I lost faith in my efforts of trespassing, I caught sight of two red shoes down the western hallway. They were Jimmy’s sneakers - still covered in mud, they lay sprawled in the middle of the hallway, laces strewn.
I came to a running halt in the hallway a few steps from his unkempt sneakers.
To my left through the window, the graphite clouds I had watched roll in had begun to rain all over the property all the way to the trees.
There was something odd about the view, however. If I looked at the right angle, a translucent oval loomed over the distant grass. Expanding, turning to one side. Blinking.
A reflection.
I snapped my head around and bumped the glass with the back of my head with a thud.
The thing’s peach torso was elongated and splashed with sage green like a moldy, worn suede slipper.
It was standing above me then, I was close enough to see its face, close enough to see its eyes. The insect’s lamps looked as if they were features drawn on a lime balloon then inflated - blue and bulbous; about to pop upon a mucus canvas.
It buckled its head to one side of its mantid neck, then the other.
Mommy…
A deep, broken voice wrapped one much younger. It was trying to speak, but its spiny mouth was made for speech no longer. It was trying to-
Fly… Look, I can fly…
Two contorted wings that could never lift weight broke free in irregular flutters; the spreading translucent veil webbing between the frames of its wings sticking together as torn, holed curtains.
I’m not exactly sure when I knew it was Jimmy. Perhaps it was when he screamed, if you would even call them screams, but I think it was when his tortured eyes met mine, asking me to take him home, asking me why I never picked him up from practice. I think that’s when I knew.
I fell to the floor when he swiped at me; my breath cutting short when my head clicked in whiplash.
Backward I crawled, screaming, pleading: “Jimmy, it’s me,”
The smooth floor was cold through my thin shirt against my back. From down below looking up I could only watch. It crawled towards me: green feelers bracing the walls of the wide hallway, thrusting its enormous body forward like it was crawling through a tight vent.
“Please-it’s Miss Brow-”
Its foot trapped my flailing leg against the marble. Thin spines popped fire inside my calf, the texture of his flesh wet and hairy like seeping roadkill.
Only when I screamed and wriggled free to my feet did I truly feel like a rat in a maze.
I used the banister of the main stairwell to launch my way to the door in a running limp. My wounds pinched at my leg with each stride - a stabbing akin to my headache not long gone.
The foyer doors to the outside didn’t budge. From the dark platform upstairs called Jimmy’s voice interlaced with horrifying, unending flutters.
I threw my fist against a nearby window. Again and again, I hammered, each thud flashing memories of Lawrence rapping against my car window when I had sped into the night.
Cascading glass shards finally gave way to my hand, and I came toppling through onto the front steps of the gothic horror.
Tears streamed down my face before being washed away by the cleansing wipe of gentle summer rain.
The things I had seen - it felt like my heart was going to give out, sweat lathered my hands. And for a while as I clambered through the forest, I wished my heart did give out, that I hadn’t forgotten about the poor child, that I wasn’t such a big fuck-up. I wished that I could take everything back, I wished upon the dancing stars on the lake that I could be someone other than my father’s daughter.
I couldn’t decide if my gooseflesh was the result of terror or the bone-chilling breeze through the trees. All I knew was that it was a long trek made even harder by the downpour. My feet slipped over sharp rocks, branches, and roots. But before long I was at a clearing, and not long after that I could see my car that was getting pelted down on the distant road by the football field.
I threw open the door and fell into the driver’s seat. For a while I sat and listened to the pitter-patter of the rain above my head. It didn’t take me away as the moonlight had, not after what I had done. Not after I had forgotten to pick up Jimmy because I was too inebriated to remember how to be a good person.
I clawed my fingers around the rubber of the wheel with both hands and trembled.
I screamed and screamed into the night sky, though the sound didn’t come. Nor would it ever come, because I knew my throat was no longer wet with bourbon, it was tight with guilt, so tightly fastened with stomach-aching guilt.
Instead, all I heard were Jimmy’s contorted screams that bounced inside my skull like a distant, dying police siren.
I was spinning; the crash of my bourbon-filled genie lamp against the pavement could not silence his crying pleas, nor bring my absolution.
And that night, through the windscreen, upon the midnight-tinted skyline, my wet eyes caught momentary beauty.
Dancing emeralds flickered and zipped by in swarms of flourishing sage, quietly and gracefully like wavering grass.
The mantises were taking flight.
